Peter Valentinovich Turchin (russian: Пётр Валенти́нович Турчи́н; born 1957) is a
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
-
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
complexity scientist, specializing in an area of study he and his colleagues developed called
cliodynamics
Cliodynamics () is a transdisciplinary area of research that integrates cultural evolution, economic history/cliometrics, macrosociology, the mathematical modeling of historical processes during the ''longue durée'', and the construction and analy ...
—
mathematical modeling
A mathematical model is a description of a system using mathematical concepts and language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed mathematical modeling. Mathematical models are used in the natural sciences (such as physics, b ...
and
statistical analysis
Statistical inference is the process of using data analysis to infer properties of an underlying distribution of probability.Upton, G., Cook, I. (2008) ''Oxford Dictionary of Statistics'', OUP. . Inferential statistical analysis infers propertie ...
of the dynamics of historical societies.
He is currently Editor-in-Chief at ''Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution''. , he is a director of the
Evolution Institute
The Evolution Institute (EI) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to apply science-based solutions and use evidence-based best practices to solve today’s most pressing social issues to improve quality of life.
It was founded by David S ...
.
Early life and education
Peter Turchin was born in 1957 in
Obninsk
Obninsk (russian: О́бнинск) is a city in Kaluga Oblast, Russia, located on the bank of the Protva River southwest of Moscow and northeast of Kaluga. Population:
History
The history of Obninsk began in 1945 when the First Research In ...
, Russia, and in 1964 he moved with his family to
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
. In 1975 he enrolled at
Moscow State University
M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...
's Faculty of Biology and studied there until 1977, when his father,
Soviet dissident
Soviet dissidents were people who disagreed with certain features of Soviet ideology or with its entirety and who were willing to speak out against them. The term ''dissident'' was used in the Soviet Union in the period from the mid-1960s until ...
Valentin Turchin
Valentin Fyodorovich Turchin (russian: Валенти́н Фёдорович Турчи́н, 14 February 1931 in Podolsk – 7 April 2010 in Oakland, New Jersey) was a Soviet and American physicist, cybernetician, and computer scientist. He d ...
, was exiled from the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
. In 1980, Turchin obtained
B.A.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
(''cum laude'') from
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
, and in his
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in from
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
in 1985.
Career
![clio](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Clio.jpg)
Throughout his career Turchin has made contributions to various fields, such as
economic history
Economic history is the academic learning of economies or economic events of the past. Research is conducted using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and the application of economic theory to historical situations and ins ...
and
historical dynamics
Historical dynamics broadly includes the scientific modeling of history. This might also be termed computer modeling of history, historical simulation, or simulation of history - allowing for an extensive range of techniques in simulation and esti ...
. He is one of the founders of
cliodynamics
Cliodynamics () is a transdisciplinary area of research that integrates cultural evolution, economic history/cliometrics, macrosociology, the mathematical modeling of historical processes during the ''longue durée'', and the construction and analy ...
, the scientific discipline at the intersection of
historical macrosociology,
cliometrics
Cliometrics (, also ), sometimes called new economic history or econometric history, is the systematic application of economic theory, econometric techniques, and other formal or mathematical methods to the study of history (especially social and e ...
, and mathematical modeling of social processes. Turchin developed an original theory explaining how large historical empires evolve by the mechanism of
multilevel selection
Group selection is a proposed mechanism of evolution in which natural selection acts at the level of the group, instead of at the level of the individual or gene.
Early authors such as V. C. Wynne-Edwards and Konrad Lorenz argued that the behav ...
. His research on
secular cycles[Turchin P. and Korotayev A. 2006]
Population Dynamics and Internal Warfare: A Reconsideration
''Social Evolution & History
''Social Evolution & History'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal focused on the development of human societies in the past, present, and future. In addition to original research articles, ''Social Evolution & History'' includes critical notes an ...
'' 5(2): 112–147; Turchin P. and Nefedov S. 2009
Secular Cycles
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large.
The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial su ...
. has contributed to our understanding of the
collapse of complex societies as has his re-interpretation of
Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldun (; ar, أبو زيد عبد الرحمن بن محمد بن خلدون الحضرمي, ; 27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406, 732-808 AH) was an Arab
The Historical Muhammad', Irving M. Zeitlin, (Polity Press, 2007), p. 21; "It is, of ...
's notion of ''
asabiyya
'Asabiyyah or 'asabiyya ( ar, عصبيّة, 'group feeling' or 'social cohesion') is a concept of social solidarity with an emphasis on unity, group consciousness, and a sense of shared purpose and social cohesion, originally used in the context ...
'' as "collective solidarity".
[.][Korotayev A.V., Khaltourina D.A]
''Introduction to Social Macrodynamics: Secular Cycles and Millennial Trends in Africa''.
Moscow: URSS, 2006. .
One of Turchin's most prominent fields of research is his study of the
hypothesis
A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous obse ...
that
population
Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a ...
pressure causes increased
warfare
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular ...
. Turchin, in collaboration with
Korotayev, has shown that negative results do not falsify the population-warfare hypothesis.
Population and warfare are dynamical variables. If their interaction causes sustained oscillations, then we do not in general expect to find strong correlation between the two variables measured at the same time (that is, unlagged). Turchin and Korotayev have explored mathematically what the dynamical patterns of interaction between population and warfare (focusing on internal warfare) might be in stateless and state societies. Next, they tested the model predictions in several empirical case studies: early modern England, Han and
Tang
Tang or TANG most often refers to:
* Tang dynasty
* Tang (drink mix)
Tang or TANG may also refer to:
Chinese states and dynasties
* Jin (Chinese state) (11th century – 376 BC), a state during the Spring and Autumn period, called Tang (唐) b ...
China, and the
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterr ...
. Their empirical results have supported the population-warfare theory: Turchin and Korotayev have found that there is a tendency for population numbers and internal warfare intensity to oscillate with the same period but shifted in phase (with warfare peaks following population peaks). Furthermore, they have demonstrated that the rates of change of the two variables behave precisely as predicted by the theory: population rate of change is negatively affected by warfare intensity, while warfare rate of change is positively affected by population density.
In 2010 Turchin published research using 40 combined social indicators to predict that there would be worldwide social unrest in the 2020s. He subsequently cited the success of
Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign
The 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump was formally launched on June 16, 2015, at Trump Tower in New York City. Trump was the Republican nominee for President of the United States in the 2016 election, having won the most state prim ...
as evidence that "negative trends seem to be accelerating" and that there has been an "unprecedented collapse of social norms governing civilized discourse". In 2020, Turchin and
Jack Goldstone
Jack A. Goldstone (born September 30, 1953) is an American sociologist, political scientist, and historian, specializing in studies of social movements, revolutions, political demography, and the 'Rise of the West' in world history. He is an a ...
predicted that political and civic unrest in the United States would continue regardless of the party in power until a leader took action to reduce inequality and improve the social indicators that are tracked in their research.
Works
Turchin has published over 200 scientific articles (including more than a dozen in ''
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
'', ''
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
'', or ''
PNAS
''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America'' (often abbreviated ''PNAS'' or ''PNAS USA'') is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It is the official journal of the National Academy of Scien ...
'') and at least eight books. He is the founder of the journal, ''
Cliodynamics
Cliodynamics () is a transdisciplinary area of research that integrates cultural evolution, economic history/cliometrics, macrosociology, the mathematical modeling of historical processes during the ''longue durée'', and the construction and analy ...
'', "...dedicated to 'the search for general principles explaining the functioning and dynamics of historical societies'",
and manages a blog, Cliodynamica.
Books
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Selected journal articles
*
Article retracted on July 7, 2021
*
*
*
*Turchin P. (2006)
Population Dynamics and Internal Warfare: A Reconsideration ''Social Evolution & History'' 5(2): 112–147 (with
Andrey Korotayev
Andrey Vitalievich Korotayev (russian: link=yes, Андре́й Вита́льевич Корота́ев; born 17 February 1961) is a Russian anthropologist, economic historian, comparative political scientist, demographer and sociologist, ...
).
*
*
*
See also
*
Elite overproduction
*
Structural-demographic theory
*
Seshat (project)
The Seshat: Global History Databank (named after Seshat, the ancient Egyptian goddess of wisdom, knowledge, and writing) is an international scientific research project of the nonprofit Evolution Institute. Founded in 2011, the Seshat: Global Hi ...
References
Further reading
* Article on work by Goldstone and Turchin.
*
* Turchin adopted and expanded Goldstone's model to apply to modern industrial states. They later became collaborators.
External links
Social Evolution Forum*
*Maini, Alessandro. "On Historical Dynamics by P. Turchin". ''Biophysical Economics and Sustainability'' 5, No. 1 (4 February 2020): 3
DOI: 10.1007/s41247-019-0063-x
{{DEFAULTSORT:Turchin, Peter
1957 births
Evolutionary biologists
World system scholars
Complex systems scientists
Living people
New York University alumni
Duke University alumni
University of Connecticut faculty
Writers from Moscow
Soviet emigrants to the United States
American biologists